Excerpt: They came in Bentleys, BMWs, Maseratis and Porsches. A handful drove Mercedes-Benzes and Lexuses. At least two luxury Tesla eco-cars made the trip. Valet attendants parked the cars of the deep-pocketed Democrats for $10 per hour and raced around the neighborhood two hours later as a line of millionaires formed. The guest of honor, Hillary Clinton, arrived in a black Cadillac for her $2,700-per-plate presidential fundraiser. As the former secretary of state's Secret Service escort pulled into the driveway of a $11.4 million home near Dallas on Wednesday night, a group of Republican activists were waiting.

Excerpt: Leadership is deeds, not speeches (except, one supposes, speeches that take on the force of deeds). The media and Washington-the-place are the problem. The surplus of spirit in the people is the solution. The president should serve something greater than himself — like Washington-the-man going back to his farm, a very Cincinnatus, relinquishing power after fully discharging his duties. Mr. Perry obviously believes he would not shrink in the comparison — he could withstand the gaze of millions, like the poet says. The exordium of the speech is a brief biography that brings out two related things, the dignity of work and the restlessness of the American race. Americans cannot be satisfied with what they have. Instead, they strive to acquire more, to do better for themselves and by each other. Mr. Perry’s argument is that success for Americans is a confirmation of dignity rather than an alternative to dignity. This is his best argument about bringing the nation together — he would have done better to choose Lincoln for his exemplar, but Washington was manlier. Mr. Perry has much to boast about, to which he is not adverse, and much to be grateful for — his audience can be gratified on both counts, then. (Of course, he has been branded as crazy warmonger already, but that's not slowing him down. He will certainly make the GOP debates interesting. --Del)

Excerpt: Republican Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker refused in an interview with ABC’s “This Week” Sunday to rule out a possible re-invasion of Iraq in order to defeat ISIS, telling correspondent Jonathan Karl that he would do whatever was necessary to protect the U.S. security interests.

Scott Walker is the only potential presidential candidate who can go to a biker rally and mean it. By Jenna Johnson

Excerpt: Scott Walker hasn’t yet said that he’s running for president. But the Wisconsin governor is working to brand himself as the plain-speaking, Miller-drinking, cheap-clothes-wearing candidate who understands the struggles of the middle class. And he rides a Harley.

This weekend is an opportunity to showcase it: He’s taking part in a “Roast and Ride” fundraiser for Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst (R), who drew national attention last year when she ran campaign ads saying that she castrated hogs growing up on a farm and that she isn’t afraid to “make ’em squeal” in Washington.

Excerpt: Campaign finance “reformers” think the United States would be better governed if the government could thoroughly regulate campaign speech, which is speech about the composition and comportment of the government. Reformers scold the Supreme Court for construing the First Amendment as though it says “Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech.” Reformers say government can limit campaign money without limiting what most of such money funds — political speech. And since the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision, reformers have been lamenting a predictable consequence of their success in imposing limits on contributions to candidates and campaigns.

Excerpt: At the end of World War II, with the world still reeling from the devastating conflict, the United States set out to build a new foundation for peace and prosperity. The three pillars of that strategy were American military strength, support for the aspirations of free peoples and a belief that free markets, bolstered by free trade, would increase prosperity for all. That new international order was wildly successful in achieving its goals. After five decades of sustained U.S. commitment, the Cold War ended and the Soviet Union collapsed, swelling the ranks of free peoples and more open economies, lifting millions out of poverty and creating new allies in the defense of freedom.

Tancredo: From Jenner to D.C., Multiculturalism Virus Is Destroying The U.S.

Excerpt: Pat Sajack, host of the popular television game show Wheel of Fortune, is catching flak from the guardians of diversity. This past week he tweeted out his frustration over the fact that it is getting harder for the show’s producers to come up with word puzzles because fewer and fewer contestants share a common culture....But the real tragedy is that our cultural elites see this as progress. (Countries without a common culture fragment. ~Bob)

Exclusive--Sessions to Obama: Why Are You Keeping Obamatrade's New Global Governance Secret?

Excerpt: “The letter, which received no reply, asked several fundamental questions Congress ought to have answered before even considering whether to grant the executive such broad new powers,” Sessions wrote to Obama on Friday referencing his previous letter. “Among those, I asked that you make public the section of the TPP that creates a new transnational governance structure known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership Commission. ...“Reviewing the secret text, plus the secret guidance document that accompanies it, reveals that this new transnational commission – chartered with a ‘Living Agreement’ clause – would have the authority to amend the agreement after its adoption, to add new members, and to issue regulations impacting labor, immigration, environmental, and commercial policy." (And the representatives of the people sold their souls and our lives for.....Read the article to see who voted for it without reading the secret text and who is against it. --Barb. Adam Smith, the founder f economics, said in his 1800s tome The Wealth of Nations that a country needed three things to grow in prosperity. 1. Pursuit of self interest. 2. A division of labor. 3. free trade. And a government that didn't interfere with external or internal trade. I've always been a free trader, not for government control/protectionism. It was the Smooth Hawley tariff bill that turned a recession into the Great Depression. ~Bob)

Excerpt: It amazes me when politicians and the media show shock when individuals and countries fail to obey the rules. If this were something new that was only rare throughout history, then I might accept the shock of these organizations, but it is not. Bad guys and bad countries rarely obey the rules. That is why we call them bad. I enjoy reading about history, but it is obvious to me that there are too few others who share my interest, especially those in a position with power. When British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain returned from Germany in 1938 and declared, “Peace in our time” while he waived a document signed by Adolph Hitler most people cheered. Giving up a country such as Czechoslovakia in the name of peace seemed to be a small price to pay. After losing a generation of men in World War One, they thought that anything was better than war. Appeasement does not last long as the world learned rather rapidly. That act has been used as the prime example of failed appeasement, but we continue to appease in the hopes that it will finally work. I fear that it is hopeless because the bad guys only obey the rules when it suits their purposes.

Scientific Fraud and Politics. Look who is lecturing Republicans about scientific truth.

Excerpt: Since the scientists brought it up, which is the greater threat to their enterprise: the Republicans who run Congress, or the most spectacular scientific fraud in a generation, which was published and then retracted by the journal Science? Last year UCLA political science grad student and maybe soon-to-be Princeton professor Michael LaCour released stunning findings from a field trial on gay marriage called “When Contact Changes Minds.” He found that a 20-minute conversation with a house-to-house canvasser could convert huge numbers of opponents into supporters, at least if the canvassers explained they were gay and told personal stories.

Once again the NYT overinflates its headline proving that it has lost all credibility. There is nothing secret in this tedious article, except its intention to try to defame America’s heroes with innuendo, false premises, disinformation and a bias you can cut with a knife. The headline should have been “Close Combat is Ugly and Bloody, Bet You Didn’t Know”. --JK

Excerpt: Myth #1 – “It’s about women in combat.” No, it’s not. Women are already in combat, and are serving well and professionally. The issue should be more clearly entitled, “Women in the infantry.” And this is a decidedly different proposition.

Excerpt: Social Security overpaid nearly half the people receiving disability benefits over the past decade, according to a government watchdog, raising questions about the management of the cash-strapped program. In all, Social Security overpaid beneficiaries by nearly $17 billion, according to a 10-year study by the agency's inspector general....The trust fund that supports Social Security's disability program is projected to run out of money late next year, triggering automatic benefit cuts, unless Congress acts. (Disability lawyers would have to find another way to earn millions. --Barb)

Rising Dragon News

Interesting: Chinese Men Outnumber Women by 33 Million After Decades of One-Child Policy, Sex-Selection Abortions

Excerpt: China was home to 33 million more men than women in 2014, renewing a long-running controversy over selective abortion, abandoned baby girls, and the country’s family planning restrictions, according to government figures released this week. China’s population stood at 1.36 billion at the end of last year, according to official statistics released this week, of whom 700 million are men and 667 million are women. (The unintended results of social engineering. It does make large infantry losses in a ground war a benefit to the Communist government. ~Bob)

With a series of major hacks, China builds a database on Americans. By Ellen Nakashima

Excerpt: China is building massive databases of Americans’ personal information by hacking government agencies and U.S. health-care companies, using a high-tech tactic to achieve an age-old goal of espionage: recruiting spies or gaining more information on an adversary, U.S. officials and analysts say. Groups of hackers working for the Chinese government have compromised the networks of the Office of Personnel Management, which holds data on millions of current and former federal employees, as well as the health insurance giant Anthem, among other targets, the officials and researchers said.

Excerpt: Avant told police he was taking a cash bag from his car into the store when Mayweather approached him while he was inside of his vehicle. Mayweather then sprayed him with a type of pepper spray and began to hit Avant in his face. Avant said Mayweather took the money bag and left on a bicycle. That's when Avant started chasing Mayweather behind AutoZone and the two exchanged gunfire. Avant was not hit, but Mayweather died on the scene.

Excerpt: A Philadelphia Police detective stopped a robbery Thursday night at a popular pizza joint in Northeast Philly, getting in a shootout with a gunman who, it turned out, was literally firing blanks. That suspect died, but another is still being sought.

Excerpt: The Harris County Sheriff's Office says a woman was sitting in the driver's seat of her vehicle at the Exxon station on FM 2100 before 6 p.m. Friday. Deputies say a male suspect got into the passenger side of her vehicle, pulled a knife and demanded her money and purse.

According to the Sheriff's Office, she kept calm and told him she would get the cash. Instead deputies say she grabbed her concealed carry weapon from her side and shot the suspect in the left shoulder.

Obamacare/Government Healthcare News

Worth Reading from the UK: How can we save the NHS? Rediscover the stiff upper lip. What is needed is some internalised restraint, a fashion for fortitude, a campaign to make coping cool and stoicism sexy By Jerermy Laurence

Excerpt: How to protect the NHS and prevent it becoming electorally toxic in five years’ time is one of the toughest challenges the new Government faces. So let me float my plan to save the NHS. Fiduciary options from introducing social insurance and GP charges to full-scale privatisation have been endlessly rehearsed. The rationing of treatments, or limiting the NHS to a set of core services, have been the subject of heated debate. My plan is different from these. It is to bring back stoicism. .. Stoics are made, not born. The capacity to tolerate discomfort and suffering is heavily dependent on parental attitudes. Parents who are supportive rather than dismissive of a child who injures itself, help to develop coping mechanisms. A parent who takes time off work for minor illnesses and complains constantly sets a different example from one who rarely complains.

Excerpt: Breitbart Texas has learned that a U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) helicopter was shot down or forced to initiate an emergency landing in Laredo, Texas due to receiving gunfire from the Mexican side of the border. The helicopter was interdicting a narcotics load and working alongside agents from the U.S. Border Patrol, who operate under the umbrella of the CBP. The helicopter was operating in the Laredo Sector of Texas, immediately across the border from the Los Zetas cartel headquarters of Nuevo Laredo, Mexico. The helicopter was in U.S. airspace and participating in the interdiction of a narcotics load coming from Mexico into the United States.

Excerpt: The Night Marine Air Temperature dataset HadNMAT2 from the UKMO is used for bias adjustments of the new NOAA ERSST.v4 “pause-buster” sea surface temperature data over nearly its full term, from 1875 to 2010. But the UKMO HadNMAT2 data are not available online so that the public can easily verify the NOAA ERSST.v4 results. That’s small fish compared to an even bigger problem for NOAA. A preliminary investigation of the UKMO dataset suggests that the HadNMAT2 data do not support NOAA’s claims of no slowdown in global surface warming. In other words, the HadNMAT2 data have a much lower warming rate than the new NOAA “pause buster” ERSST.v4 data since 1998.

Excerpt: A senior National Weather Service official helped write the job description and set the salary for his own post-retirement consulting post– then came back to the office doing the same job with a $43,200 raise, the agency’s watchdog found. The deputy chief financial officer also demanded that he be paid a $50,000 housing allowance near Weather Service headquarters in downtown Silver Spring in violation of government rules for contractors, one of numerous improprieties in a revolving-door deal sealed with full knowledge of senior agency leaders, according to an investigation by the Commerce Department Inspector General’s office.

Religion of Peace News

Iraq is going bad fast: The Kurds Are Starting to Panic in the War Against ISIS. By Jeremy Bender

Excerpt: The Kurds desperately need an influx of arms and supplies in order to be able to continue to hold their 600-mile long border against ISIS attacks. The need for weapons has only increased over the past months as the militant group has effectively plundered Iraqi military bases after overrunning cities, Yaroslavl Torino reports from Kurdish-controlled areas for The Wall Street Journal. “Peshmerga ammunition stocks are running low and whatever heavy weapons they have are mostly of Saddam Hussein-era vintage,” Torino reports, citing Peshmerga commanders. Currently, Kurdish lines throughout Iraq consist of defenses manned by Peshmerga troops armed with outdated weapons with dwindling supplies of ammunition.

Flashback: Obama Says Pulling U.S. Troops Out Of Iraq Was Not His Decision

“If you will not fight for right when you can easily win without blood shed; if you will not fight when your victory is sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.” ― Winston S. Churchill

Excerpt: The United States faces a clear and present danger. It is not theoretical, it is actual. The pieces are in place. The relationships are established. The will and capability have been clearly demonstrated. And, if that’s not enough to keep you up at night, a full dress rehearsal was staged less than a year ago. Indeed, to be more precise, some half a dozen full dress rehearsals were staged less than a year ago. My name is Dan Gordon. I am a screenwriter and author by trade, but I am also a Reserve officer in the Israel Defense Forces, and a veteran of six Middle Eastern conflicts, including last summer’s Hamas/Israel terrorist tunnel war, in which Hamas demonstrated their capability to attempt a mass-casualty terrorist attack by means of tunnels dug beneath the internationally recognized border from Gaza into southern Israel.

Report: Obama Plans To Free Up To 10 Detainees From GuantanamoBay Soon

Excerpt: The Obama administration, while the Senate debates halting transfers out of the GuantanamoBay detention center and keeping the prison operable indefinitely, is planning to free up to 10 detainees, possibly in June, Defense One has learned.... “I just talked to the National Security Council and State [Department], so we can say maybe up to 10 — no specific timeframe, but in the near future. And then we’re actively engaged with a number of countries in additional negotiations regarding the 57 that are eligible.

Excerpt: Girls between ages 1-9 are kidnapped, sold, and bought at slave bazaars then married and remarried throughout Islamic areas. While ISIS may be orchestrating most of the child sex trafficking and condones institutionalized violence against women as a “righteous act,” it is important to understand this is not extremism and mirrors Muhammad’s behavior and instruction. Muhammad did everything the Qur’an permits: marrying multiple women (4:3), including slaves (4:24) and prepubescent girls (65:4), and beating wives as a form of punishment (4:34). It is no coincidence that no 9 year-old girls can be found in Syria, Iraq, Libya and other areas experiencing humanitarian crises. This is Islam.

Muslims Asked About Martyrdom, Religion By US Border Officials At Entry Ports

Excerpt: U.S. border officials are using a questionnaire about religion to harass Muslim travelers, a Muslim advocacy group charges. The Immigration and Customs Enforcement questionnaire was released by the Department of Homeland Security in response to a lawsuit by the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the Intercept reports. The questions that were revealed -- the document was heavily redacted -- include "Have you participated in any formal religious training or schooling?" "What house of worship do you attend?" and "Do you have any relatives or friends who have been martyred fighting in the defense of your beliefs?"

Excerpt: Two radical Islamic groups in Denmark argue that democracy is incompatible with their religion and have told Muslims to boycott the June 18 election. The controversial Islamic organization Hizb ut-Tahrir has urged Danish Muslims to stay away from the voting booths on the upcoming June 18th election as a form of protest against the democratic system.

Obama's Legacy: Libyan gains may offer ISIS a base for new attacks. By Hassan Morajea and Erin Cunningham

Excerpt: As the Islamic State scores new victories in Syria and Iraq, its affiliate in Libya is also on the offensive, consolidating control of Moammar Gaddafi’s former home town and staging a bomb attack on a major city, Misurata. The Islamic State’s growth could further destabilize a country already suffering from a devastating civil war. And Libya could offer the extremists a new base from which to launch attacks elsewhere in North Africa. (Remember when Libya was stable and quiet? Back before BOs lead-from-behind war? ~Bob)

Excerpt: "Boss" Tweed, head of the corrupt late-19thcentury leadership of New York City known as "Tammany Hall," is reputed to have had a particular aversion to cartoonist Thomas Nast. Why? Because Nast exposed Tweed's corruption in a pictorial form that was easily understood and effective – by political cartoons. "Stop them damn pictures. I don't care what the papers write about me," were Tweed's instructions to his minions. Why do people express serious concepts in cartoons? Because they are effective in getting the message across. Some cartoons are in good taste, some in bad taste. Yet it has become fashionable in some circles to deem ANY cartoon representation of Muhammad automatically to be in bad taste.

Who Put “The Self-Appointeds” in Charge of Free Speech? By Douglas Murray

Excerpt: Is what they are doing legal and is it something our laws and traditions protect? The answer, in both France and America, is “Yes.” If what they are doing is legal, we should defend them. When people — who seek to break not just our laws but our customs and tradition of free speech — attempt to kill those people, then the response can be only solidarity. We are no more justified in making ourselves judge and jury of a victim or potential victim than the Islamists are justified in making themselves the self-appointed executioners. Something happened in America last week that cannot be passed over. There are two parts to it. The first is what happened. The second is what happened in response.